FIA is Suffering from a Severe Shortage of Staff

Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Director General has informed that the agency has a critical staff shortage. The DG told the Supreme Court that due to this severe shortage of workforce, FIA has not been able to complete several assigned tasks.

FIA DG told that human trafficking issues are the highest in Gujrat. However, due to the lack of staff, the agency has failed to take any effective steps, DG added.

Staff Shortage

According to documents from the agency, the numbers behind staff shortage stand as following;

• Overall, FIA currently has 3,301 employees on payroll. On the other hand, total number of seats assigned to the agency are 4,043. FIA is working with a shortage of about 18% of its assigned staff.
• Among the vacancies, six posts are of grade-20, 12 posts of grade-19, 114 posts of grade-16 and 251 posts of grade-5. 37 employees are working on contract basis with FIA.
• Out of those 37, 7 employees are on grade-16 scale, 4 each in grade-11 and 12 are on grade-9.

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Integrated Border Management System (IBMS)

The department, which looks after the data of foreigners coming to and out of the country, is also facing severe staff shortage. All processes starting from visa issuance for coming to Pakistan to the point of leaving Pakistan are handled by this department. There are a total of 93 vacancies, out of 223 assigned seats, that this department has failed to fill.

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National Response for Centre of Cyber Crimes

The situation of staff shortage is worst at the all-important National Response for Centre of Cyber Crimes (NR3C). It was thought that NR3C would work the most after the bill of prevention of cyber-crimes was passed in 2016. However, the situation of staff shortage at this department is the worst.

• This department was assigned 102 seats, however, only 31 have been filled so far. According to sanctioned vacancies, it was assigned 15 grade-19 posts, 10 of grade-18 posts and 27 of grade-17. However, it has failed to fill all vacancies.
• 5 of the employees working at NR3C are of grade-19, four are on grade-18 while 15 are working on grade-17.

Via Tribune